We are organizing the Workshop at IEEE RoboSoft 2019 (Seoul, Korea) on Morphological Computation through Physical Adaptation of Soft Robots.

The workshop aims to present the latest advances in the fields of adaptive robotics and to understand the role of morphological computation to achieve adaptive systems.

Synopsis:

Biological systems show an incredible ability to flexibly and dynamically adapt. This is achieved through their ability to change their mechanical bodies by growing, morphogenesis and self-healing. It can also be achieved by augmenting their bodies through tool-usage or tool creation. This approach is seen in nature, for example birds and insects use tools to find food and plant systems can rapidly reconfigure their structure to adapt to changing light conditions. These changes allow the emergence of behaviours to enable survival. Some of the computation is offload from the brain or controller to the physical body, such that the physical body is controlling some of the complex environmental interactions. To enable adaptivity and intelligence which is comparable to animals, robots must show physical changes which enables some of the computation to be offloaded to the physical body. Soft robots demonstrate the compliance necessary to achieve these physical adaptations making them uniquely positioned to take advantage of these approaches. Although this is a significant technological challenge, soft robots have already provided notable demonstrations of growing, morphing and self-healing behaviours. In this workshop we will address how soft robotics can leverage morphological computation to achieve the highly flexible and adaptive behaviours.

When : 14th April 2019, full-day
Where: COEX, Seoul, Korea

Workshop website:  http://divf.eng.cam.ac.uk/birl/Main/RobosoftWS

Conference website: www.robosoft2019.org

The workshop organising team:
Josie Hughes (University of Cambridge)
Dr. Fumiya Iida (University of Cambridge)
Dr. Perla Maiolino (University of Oxford)
Dr. Thrishantha Nanayakkara (Imperial College)
Dr. Matteo Cianchetti (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna)